


The Haunting of Brocket Hall

by rosncrntz



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Dark Vicbourne Fest 2018, F/M, Ghosts, Halloween, ghost story, rosncrntz actually writes fic for once, spooky scary, with lots of love underneath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 02:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: Victoria has always felt quite at home in the warm fire-lit libraries and elegant rooms; her spirit is at one with it - and he who dwells within it. However, it soon become clear, that she is not the only soul bound up within the walls of Brocket Hall.





	The Haunting of Brocket Hall

“I really am most awfully afraid, Lord M.”

“Well, Ma’am… as I have always said… I am glad you feel you can come to me for comfort.”

Bemused though he was, he took a courteous step sideways to allow the Queen to enter his humble abode, which she did, eminently, and forwardly, as the royal carriage departed along the drive towards the gate, nestled in the bosom of two yellow autumn lime trees. She told him, passing her shawl and bonnet to the footman (much as confused as his master), that she chose not to bring any of her ladies as this was only a short-term arrangement and she would be loth to rouse suspicions. In saying this, she thought Lord M would be pleased with her but, his mind occupied on which of the upstairs rooms would best fit a royal visitation, he did not give her much in the way of reward.

The reason for the sudden visitation was this: the cold weather had driven the rats into the Palace. The cold weather, for one, and the incompetency of Penge, too, was a contributing factor to this autumn’s rat infestation – it really had become quite chaotic, Victoria thought, since Lehzen was forced to leave them. She had told Albert this but, of course, he did not listen. Whatever the reason, or whatever the solution: rats. This, of course, would not do. The Queen would have to go. Well, realistically, the rats would have to go, but whilst this undertaking was being carried out by a staff of disgruntled men, the Queen fled. Rats would not do at all. She was terrified of rats.

Lord Melbourne listened with a grey and resigned sort of pity.

Brocket Hall was a safe bet. She knew Lord M, liked him a lot, trusted his discretion, and – most importantly – was a safe distance away from London’s clattering rat population. It had been a while since she had seen Lord M, too. That was a little of her motivation. Only a little.

And the country was so lovely this time of year! The colour of the leaves – almost scarlet – a colour one simply does not see in the press of the city! She could get drunk on the richness of the autumn; she adored it so. The rooks tumbling up into branches and cracking their great wings in the dewy mist; the raw snap of their calls in the morning; these were delights so particular to her. The warm press of Lord M’s hand on hers; this was a delight so very particular to her. His amiable lounging on his armchair – that particular comforting warmth of a familiar face, an even more familiar smell, and the safety of one’s younger years brought forth yet again: nostalgic, sweet-tasting, and simple.

The footman, under strict orders to prepare a room promptly, returned to the library where Lord M was trying his hardest to entertain the Queen (he was quite out of practise on this matter, and rather too tired in aspect to be as adept as he knew he once was) and whispered in his master’s ear that the room was prepared: the room at the end of the hall at the very top of Brocket Hall.

Lord Melbourne faltered a little and, in his distraction, allowed the footman to reach the door before he started up and caught his servant. Victoria felt a little unnecessary, sitting beside the window idly and alone as her dear friend abandoned her for a word with his servant! She folded her hands in her lap impatiently, and watched the toing and froing of silent words, indicated only by lips and vaguely nodding heads.

These words went on. Victoria tapped her foot. There was a brandishing light filtering, the colour of warm brandy, through the window beside her. It felt warm on the back of her neck, yet the air was cold. The cracking of rooks muffled through the glass caught her ear. Lord Melbourne regained his seat opposite her.

“Is there any problem?” Victoria asked, cocking her head in that curious fashion that was so familiar to Lord M, like the recalling of a memory.

“No, no. Only a trivial matter, Ma’am.” His eyes roved across the view behind her but did not meet any feature or facet of her face. Victoria shifted. “Would you care for cake? I cannot say I eat much, but I am sure we have some in the pantry.”

They ate cake. Talked. Soon Victoria had forgotten all about that brief exchange between master and servant and was laughing and joking with her old friend as she had done, becoming increasingly thrilled by the trembling of laughter and the charm of his company. Melbourne, too, was easing into her company once more which, though it brought him that particularly acute sort of pain that feels as if one is pressing their own bruise, he pressed at it nonetheless. She pressed at it, and he smiled and let her.

“Oh, I hardly slept a wink last night, Lord M. The rats had me so aggrieved!” Victoria sighed, feeling the grasp of sleep come about her, dozing her eyelids. The journey had been cold and tiring this time of year, and the dark evenings sent her peculiarly drowsy, and the warmth of the library – the fire he kept continually lit and blazing! – was cosseting her.

“You must be tired, Ma’am. Perhaps I will show you to your room?” he offered, rising, with effort, and holding out his arm for her to take. She rose, tiredly but with much more ability, and wound her sleeve about his arm, rested upon it, and found that it had considerable strength indeed, and felt comforted at his keeping off of infirmity. He still had much vigour left, she knew that well. She did worry for him, in truth, particularly in those long winter months which can savage those elder citizens with less hardy dispositions than her dear Lord M.

He walked her up the staircase, and their feet echoed around the silent halls. Victoria found it strange, though she was too tired to enquire, that suddenly they seemed to be completely alone in the windings and risings of Brocket Hall. The footman, the servants, the sweet maid that brought the cake in to them, the cook that had baked the cake, and all the foibles and runnings of a house such as this; all of them appeared to have evaporated into the papery air. Their echoes split against no other bodies. Their voices were heard by no other but themselves.

Lord M was carrying a candle with them up the staircase, which Victoria was happy of, for the spaces around them began to grow pitchy. The haloing of gold around their twinned shadows was a comfort, and Victoria focused on it, to keep her mind away from the depth of unseen corners. The distorting of their forms, lengthening on walls and twisting on corners, felt soothing.

Eventually, making their way down a hall, at first towards a blackness and then (as the candle illuminated) towards a door, they reached the room prepared for Victoria, and Lord Melbourne unlocked the door, and bestowed upon Victoria the key, which she clasped in her palm. The key was icy cold – one could never have guessed it had sat in Lord Melbourne’s pocket for the journey upwards.

The room was well-furnished and, as soon as Lord Melbourne had made his rounds with the candle, alighting spots in the room, it was well-lit and homely. He drew the curtains over two long windows facing towards the grounds and the river cutting through, and stood ceremoniously in the room, awaiting her judgement. The soft duck-egg blue of the sheets and the striping of the wallpaper and the clean dustlessness of the cabinets and bookcases were pleasing indeed, and Victoria thanked Lord Melbourne for his hospitality on such short notice. It felt a lot like Buckingham, but a lot more like home.

“Well, Ma’am, I wish you a good night,” Lord M said, making his way to the door. “Do ring if you require anything.” Victoria had grown quite settled perched on the edge of her high bed, and almost allowed Lord Melbourne to leave without her having asked the crucial question. However, before he could close the door, she cried out, “Oh! Lord M, I almost forgot to ask. Where do you sleep?”  
“Downstairs, almost directly.”

Victoria grew a little disturbed at the distance of an entire floor between her and her companion. It made her nervous to have an entire floor to herself, rooms beside her that she did not know, with inhabitants she may not know. Oh silliness! Her nerves were quite frayed since the rats had gnawed their way into the palace. She shook herself off with a giggle and a cry of, “Wonderful! Thank you, Lord M. Good night!”

Lord M made a curt bow and, as he retreated, Victoria saw the silhouette of his strong profile cast along the wall. It was exceedingly handsome, she thought. Oh silliness! Silliness, indeed.

Victoria unbound herself from her dress, allowed it to fall to the floor and did not pick it up. She was far too tired to bother folding and pressing and, in all honesty, she would never have done so at Buckingham anyway. She threw her nightgown over her shoulders and allowed the white smock to swallow up her form. She blew out the candles and, languidly, she prised the sheets apart, and needled herself between the quilted folds of fresh-smelling blankets. She was quite warm in the bed, and the dark no longer seemed oppressive and frightening, but friendly and cosy.

Friendly and cosy, for she knew she was in Brocket Hall. And she knew that Lord M was downstairs. She wondered idly whether he was already asleep. She thought he looked a little weary – she hoped silently that he was sleeping now, and even the thought of Lord M dreaming in the room below her made her eyes heavy and bleary, and the quilts around her felt heavy and safe. Her toes were cold; she wriggled her feet in the sheets to warm them. She closed her eyes – darkness became darkness – and she pushed her head back into the pillow.

There was no noise – all the better, for Victoria slept best when she was undisturbed.

A little wind, perhaps, stroking along the window panes with long airy fingers trying to catch at locks. But the locks were locked tightly, rightly, and Victoria felt quite warm and safe where she was.

Oh! There really was a little more wind than she had remembered! She could not recall when the wind’s noise became so loud, but soon she realised that there was a whistling noise reverberating like an echo through the corners and ornaments of the room. She felt no draft. The window could not have flown open. And, yet, the noise of it seemed to be closing right around her form. She opened her eyes. But there was no sight to speak of, nor the uncanny feeling of closeness to fright her. She felt quite alone and, yet, quite afraid that she was not so alone.

She closed her eyes. The wind persisted. It did not sound like wind. Now she thought of it, it did not sound like wind. But she did not know what else to call it if not wind. It sounded more substantial than that. It sounded as if it had heat. Like a moan. A cry.

Her body was cold. She opened her eyes, sat up, startled, frightened.

“Hello?”

It was absurd to talk aloud to the nothingness, but her words spilled out of her without her thoughts to guide them. She felt so silly. She felt like a little girl, afraid of the dark, if Lord Melbourne heard her, oh, he would think her absurd, talking like this to the –

A whiteness amongst the shadow. In the corner of the room. At first a trick of the light and then something more. She blinked. No. Something more. Her eyes widened and her heart fell asunder with icy spasms that seemed to paralyse her muscles. The whiteness did not move, but remained, in the vague but misty shape of a woman: a skirt, two outstretched unnatural arms, a faceless head glowing like a candle in the fog, still as anything, unnaturally skill, as if the thing were an object rather than a woman, heavy and incapable of movement. And it was utterly noiseless.

Victoria remembered the sound of wind. There was no wind anymore.

The figure seemed all of a sudden to move, not towards her, but around the edges of the room – no object or piece of furniture was a barrier for the whiteness, whilst progressed heavily to the other corner where there was a mantle-piece. Pictures laid among it. The white form shifted across them and Victoria, helpless, dazed, frightened, could not bring herself to move or speak.

A picture fell under the shadowy brightness of the white patch of mist, and it rose, moved, cracked, smashed against the opposite wall making Victoria cry out for fear.

The lock of the door cracked. The door swung open. Victoria was bolt upright, pale as the sheets which were pinned around her legs by her two rigid hands. Lord Melbourne entered, distracted.

“Ma’am?” he cried, flying to her side at the bed, looking her over, “Whatever happened, Ma’am?” he asked, when she made no effort to ease his concerns, or even an effort to look at him. Her eye remained fixed on the mantle-piece, wide, her mouth gaping open, her hair all astray and wild. She looked like a thing ready for roving midnight wildernesses – not the Queen at all. “Ma’am?”

“There was somebody in here.”

Melbourne cocked his head. There could not have been. He turned, examined the room, saw the picture lying smashed on the floor beside the wall.

“How did this happen?” he asked, not angrily, but concernedly, a little upset, as he stooped to pick the picture from the floorboards and turned it around to see the torn likeness of his wife, himself, little Augustus. Caro had drawn that picture. She never was good at drawing, but she insisted on doing it, and he indulged her, for it kept her contented. He had kept the drawing. It was an earlier time. But now, the impact of the frame on the wall and the glass on the paper had made a large wound, a tear up the centre of the paper, severing Lord Melbourne at the arm, and casting Caroline and her son – their son – off at an angle. He twisted them together again in his fingers, but the rip remained. “What happened?” he repeated, turning to Victoria, who was beginning to calm.

“I don’t know,” Victoria replied, already beginning to doubt her own sense. Perhaps she was only tired – yet that did not explain how the picture had flown into the wall. That did not explain why the vision had been so vivid, so real.

Melbourne sighed, and took pity on the frightened Queen – his friend, most dear, “I will move you into another room. Here, come.” Having placed the picture down, he gently took her arm, took a hand to the small of her waist to support her, allowed her to lean on to him and he look her weight happily. He smelled warm and comforting. His hand was warm. His voice was comforting. “I must say I am surprised my steward prepared this room in the first place,” he said, helping her out of the room.

“Why ever is that?” Victoria asked, becoming tired again beside the warmth of her dear Lord M.

Melbourne sighed, shook his head, laughed a little.

“Well, this was Caroline’s room once.”

**Author's Note:**

> *GASP* I'm actually writing Vicbourne?? Feels good to be back... as always, pop me a comment, let me know your thoughts! x


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